It's Yours To Keep

This is a roundabout story about a missing puzzle piece, but we get there by talking about the pieces that have already been made to fit.

I have been told by some that I can be quick to cut people out of my life. And, I suppose, this has been the case in a few instances. The reasons would have been varied and personal, but it happened mostly because life is really too short to allow miserable people or those who want to use you as a pawn in any way to take up too much space out of a misplaced sense of obligation. They didn't really want to be a part of my life, or they would have expressed love instead of creating enmity. You sow the seeds, people.

I'm aloof, hard to get to know, unapproachable...yes, all of those things and more. I am not a robot, though. I do have some positive qualities that other people can appreciate. And I have a number of really wonderful relationships with people I care about, and who care about me in return: my parents and siblings and most of my extended family, my husband and *his* siblings and extended family, my son, wonderful neighbors, a good group of friends (both IRL and those I've made online over the years), some co-workers - mostly past but some more present - and former classmates who I've been fortunate enough keep in contact with. My life is rich and full in so many ways, make no mistake.

When I glom onto you, like an especially clingy and tenacious octopus, it's often for keeps, pretty much.

My very best friend and I have known each other for ten years. For all of that time, through a lot of growing up and life changes, we have tried to be there for each other as much as we could. This took...continues to take...effort. It took looking past a decent age gap and making frequent hour-long drives on Florida interstates. We both say we wish we lived closer. I think, though, that the distance, in making us work harder, made our friendship stronger, because we had to put that effort in. It was never a case of, "Oh, they're just down the street, I can stop by anytime." It takes concerted planning on both of our parts to do something as simple as have coffee together. All of this is to say, the relationships you want, the most meaningful ones, thrive on the work you put into them. If you ever find yourself doing the work and not seeing it reciprocated, you should stop and ask yourself if the effort is worth the diminished returns.

This all leads me to the main point of this meandering post. I am one of those people with a certain chunk of their personal history veiled in the murk of mythology. There's a story I've written for that missing identity narrative, but I have no idea how much is truth and how much is fiction. I wrote a free-form poem about it. I had other things I needed to do, but sometimes when you have to say a thing, it will find its way to being said, no matter what you do to try and stop it...

For more years than I can remember or count
I have carried a phone number written down on a scrap of paper;
drafted letters to someone I haven't seen or spoken to since childhood;
used the internet to fill in the blanks
on the a bare branches of a virtual stranger's family tree.
How do you reach out to someone who shares your blood,
has echoes of your face in theirs,
but wouldn't know you if they passed you on the street?
Seeing your other daughter's smile in her profile picture,
wondering if she is even aware that I exist
in the same small universe,
separated by a gulf of ten years
and my insurmountable stubbornness.
If I can find you, at the touch of a few keys,
something as simple as a Google search of your mother's name,
can you ever understand why I never dialed that number,
never sent those letters,
will not push the button on that slim chance to connect?
Because knowing that if I can find you,
you could just as easily find me,
is one of the hardest truths I've ever had to finally face.